pure is by keeping these channels
open, so that nobody may deem himself so humble as not to constitute a
part of the body politic, so that there will constantly be coming new
blood into the veins of the body politic; so that no man is so obscure
that he may not break the crust of any class he may belong to, may not
spring up to higher levels and be counted among the leaders of the state.
Anything that depresses, anything that makes the organization greater than
the man, anything that blocks, discourages, dismays the humble man, is
against all the principles of progress. When I see alliances formed, as
they are now being formed, by successful men of business with successful
organizers of politics, I know that something has been done that checks
the vitality and progress of society. Such an alliance, made at the top,
is an alliance made to depress the levels, to hold them where they are, if
not to sink them; and, therefore, it is the constant business of good
politics to break up such partnerships, to re-establish and reopen the
connections between the great body of the people and the offices of
government.

To-day, when our government has so far passed into the hands of special
interests; to-day, when the doctrine is implicitly avowed that only select
classes have the equipment necessary for carrying on government; to-day,
when so many conscientious citizens, smitten with the scene of social
wrong and suffering, have fallen victims to the fallacy that benevolent
government can be meted out to the people by kind-hearted trustees of
prosperity and guardians of the welfare of dutiful employees,--to-day,
supremely, does it behoove this nation to remember that a people shall be
saved by the power that sleeps in its own deep bosom, or by none; shall be
renewed in hope, in conscience, in strength, by waters welling up from its
own sweet, perennial springs. Not from above; not by patronage of its
aristocrats. The flower does not bear the root, but the root the flower.
Everything that blooms in beauty in the air of heaven draws its fairness,
its vigor, from its roots. Nothing living can blossom into fruitage unless
through nourishing stalks deep-planted in the common soil. The rose is
merely the evidence of the vitality of the root; and the real source of
its beauty, the very blush that it wears upon its tender cheek, comes from
those silent sources of life that lie hidden in the chemistry of the soil.
Up from that soil, up from t